


Deconstruction of a Perfect Love/Illusion

by TallysGreatestFan



Series: Body, Heart and Soul AU [1]
Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Self-Denial, Unpopular Opinion, Unrequited Love, pls don't kill me!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-11-14
Packaged: 2019-08-09 16:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16453067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TallysGreatestFan/pseuds/TallysGreatestFan
Summary: What would have happened if Delenn would have truly thought about the reasons the Dreaming showed for her actions? With all her strength, she tries to stop the realization, but slowly, she starts recognizing disturbing truths about herself – and how they affect the relationship to the two men who mean the most to her.





	1. Welcome

_Musik: ,,Hurricane“ – Ms Mr_

_,,Hey Now“ – London Grammar_

_,,Easier to Run" - Linkin Park_

_,,Welcome to the inner workings of my mind / so dark and trilled I can’t  disguise / can’t disguise / nights like this / I become afraid / of the darkness in my heart” (,,Hurricane” – Ms Mr)_

 

****

**_Welcome_ **

 

How strange it is after all that happened, that today I am more nervous than back then, despite undergoing the ritual with a human, and today with a Minbari, an member of my own people. Or maybe more the people I belonged to once. Is this why I feel this way? Because back then, I was able to pretend that I still belong to them, and because John did not knew who I was? Because now, in direct contrast, I can’t hide my alienness anymore and because Lennier knows me?

 

It began with the ritual of Dreaming, yet I do not know how many more years I could have persuade myself I would be only the one who united the Minbari with the humans, not everything else too, had I never taken the notion to my heart. How long would I have denied who I am, had I just waited and hoped the universe would have already lead me to the right path? And how much of me would have been still left after that time?

 

I feel Lenniers hand in mine, slender and warm and yet so strong. I lead him, he follows half beside, half behind me. My heart beats so strongly that I can feel every single beat against my ribcage and neck and belly. Every beat resounds in my head.

Lenniers fingers move over mine searching for support, his eyes flutter back and forth and only rest on the floor. But he smiles. I know his smile can mean many things. Most often politeness and expression of his insecureness. Sometimes enthusiasm, hold back trough shyness. Far too often brave attempt to hide the pain behind it. Yet I have seen him smile like this only a few times. There is nothing forced or insecure or shy about it, it is pure happiness.

His light brown-silvern robe, his favorite robe, swings around his slender body.

I lead him past the people who kneel or sit in the room, respectfully quiet. My glance wanders over science attaché Yeestrell, who follows me with her eyes without moving her head, her hands folded in her lap. My other two attachés kneel beside her, already meditating too. Vir sits in the last row near the wall, his hair crest an clear foreign body between all the Minbari. He does seem to feel not quite comfortable. Admittedly, he tries to let his face be blank, but now and then an half shameful, half nervous expression steals into it that reminds me at a teenager who is in the midst of sexual-education-talks with his parents. But he dispels it again and again, and sits upright and still except for nervous movements of his hands. He is here as Lenniers closest friend, an alien at a Minbari ritual, uncommon. Shortly I regret that Mayan is not here. She is, no, was my best friend till the civil war, who accompanied me since the beginning of my adult life. Not even Susan or Mila Shar keep watch here with the priests.

I let my eyes wander further. Minbari of the Religious Caste. And then John.

I did not expect to meet John here at all. Shouldn’t he had appointments now? Does he this to himself to prove to himself that its final?

I don’t want to look at him, but I have to. I have to see him to really realize what this means. I fear the pain or the furry that must been written into his face.

Yet he looks different than I expected. Anger and pain are present, that too, but above all there is disregard and something that shows very clearly how senseless and antiquated he considers the ritual, even when he would never admit that. He eyes Lennier forcedly nonchalant and I feel how he noticeably slumps. Unlike Vir he doesn’t even tries to copy the respectful stance of the Minbari. He sits there cross-legged, leans on his hands and shifts his weight so that it is most comfortable for him. He doesn’t even makes the slightest effort to understand the ritual.

Of course this would have been to much to ask in this situation, I scold myself, he has every right to it now, yet it is not the first time that I see this indifference, yes, almost degradation of my culture. It never bothered me even just slightly – how can that be? – but now every piece of empathy lapses. I pull Lennier with me, and close the bedroom door behind us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I upload this with the second chapter right behind because alone it would be a bit crass as a start. I’m not sure if it is to cruel to let Sheridan watch, but then, Lennier had to sit watch too and somehow it makes sense to me that he needed that for letting go and truly realizing that the two of them are to different to fit harmonically together. 
> 
> Updates will take place every Thursday and Sunday at 21:00 (9pm) middle european standard time


	2. The Inner Workings of My Mind

**_The Inner Workings of my Mind_ **

 

When did the suspicion lurk at the edge of my consciousness for the first time? So much had happened back then. While John and I lead the battle against darkness this feeling was far to meaningless in the face of the war to ever pay attention to it.

Was it as I marveled at his work smiling and naïve as a child and played around with his language, and rejoiced over his smile as reward?

Was it as he said grinning: ,,I don’t have anything against alien rituals, especially not with a woman as beautiful as you”? For one tiny moment I felt something spark up. Furiousness about seeing our millennia-old culture, everything that made us out simply paraphrased to ,,alien rituals” and the uncomfortable feeling not I as a person but just the fact that I was ,,such a beautiful woman” would be the reason that he would get himself into at all. Did I say nothing back then because I still had to make him believe to be just a naïve human woman to have him as ally for my plans? Yet didn’t we were actually far to close now for that to be still necessary? Or did I say nothing because I knew that with all his easiness and happy energy he plain and simple was not aware of how deeply his allegedly compliment was?

And the emotion did vanish immediately. He did respect me and my culture after all. Our love overcame the former hostility between our people after all, it was such an important political symbol. He was the love of my life after all.

 

Or back then as my clan sent me into the Dreaming? They wanted to help me understand my motivations, said Callenn. They had to find out if it really was the calling of my heart or something else. I did not think the slightest bit Callenn with his self-praising tone of voice could speak the truth.

How much alike my former self was to Lennier. We both were so shy and insecure, our gaze directed on the floor, yes, we even talked similar, slightly hesitating before each word. Almost as if he would be my mirror image. For a moment I believed that he could understand everything about me, even my terrible mistake. It was so comforting, comforting and foolish.

And he understood it in truth. He didn’t confess crying he could not look at me anymore without thinking at the monster I was in truth. He just stared past me deep in thought. He could not truly have forgiven me. Not really. And so I answered with the truth, and described the terrible, all-embracing fury that had filled me, half to justify myself, half because I did not want believe it. Yes, I was the woman who almost extinguished humanity.

,,The fault is not yours.”, he tried to comfort me. Or maybe to protect himself from truly having to see that his best friend, mentor, was a mass murderer and war criminal. I did not allow it. I was the one who had given the deciding vote. The Dreaming showed me a truth that did not left open any flight, any other possibility. How could I ever have not thought about it, how had I deserved to not feel this guilt so often in the past?

And the dreaming showed me this guilt, as brutally clear as everything else.

,,A moment of rage.”, my own voice sounded distant, ,,I spent the last ten years of my life trying to make up for it.”

,,And that is why you have agreed to become one with Sheridan.”, and Lenniers voice was only a continuation of this terrible truth.

Betrayal. Now he had betrayed me nevertheless.

I heard myself gasp, turned about to see his face, but it was just as blank and thoughtful as ever.

,,You’re still grieving for your action”, I didn’t wanted to hear that, but he still continued, ,,still guilty over the death of so many humans, trying to atone for your mistake.”

,,You can not believe that!”, I snarled at him. My own voice sounded shrill in my ears.

Terrible, terrible truth. This could, must not be the reason for my love for Sheridan. No, it was not. I loved him genuinely after all. Not as penance for all the lives I took. It was not true.

,,Not after we’ve been trough so much! You have seen!”

,,Yes, I have.”, he finally said, ,,And no, I do not believe it.”

Of course not. It couldn’t be true.

,,But we can not lie about the Dreaming. And if we tell them what the dreaming showed us, this is what they will say, and this is what they will believe.”

I managed to breath normally again. Somehow I had not even realized that I could not breath until now.

So the Dreaming had just warned us how my Clan could try to claim my courtship with Sheridan as wrong. But why wasn’t there more? I needed more.

After that I didn’t even wasted a thought about it could be the reason. Yet something inside me stang and it was more than just the feeling of betrayal. How could Lennier have doubted about it for just an moment? Our love was perfect.

 

Just a few days after my visit to my clan I found John at his office.

,,You wanted to speak with me because you needed my advice for the Hyach-treaties?”, I said with an smile that showed how less this was truly the reason, as we both knew. How much I would have longed to be alone with him for a few hours, without the duty to protect all those people.

John sat at his desk, and put down an giant orange to hand me the papers. I stroke his hair, breathing in its bewitching skent while doing it, read through the agreements and corrected mistakes he had made in his political lack of knowledge, but the orange drew my attention. It was as big as Johns head.

,,No, one only makes unofficial contact with these groups, otherwise one would wake the rage of the government. This is an widely common mistake.”, I explained, and towards the orange, ,,What is this?”

,,It is amazing, isn’t it?”, his eyes gleamed and his voice was full of excision. He continued to peel of the skin and considered it fascinated. It too looked like a normal orange, except for the slightly more yellowish color – and the fact that one piece of it had the length of his hand and was more than half as wide.

,,That’s a pomelo. We had just an two-ton shipment from one of the rouge traders, he had to get rid of them as unobtrusively as possible.”

I couldn’t help but smile with him. It filled me with warmth  how much he could rejoice even over something as small as an fruit-delivery, even in times like this.

But then it seemed suddenly as if something had slightly, oh so slightly shifted in reality. And it seemed to me that it was more than just the tension after all this crisis. Suddenly it was to me as if I would miss something that I hadn’t had since Jeffrey Sinclair.

I longed to talk with Susan about my exhaustion and my worries when our talks exceptionally got deeper and we dared to show our inner selves.

Then John laughed and the emotion vanished. He had peeled the pomelo to a half by now and examined it grinning and with a shake of his head. But finally he ripped a piece out – it looked really absurd how gigantic this strange earth fruit was – and his look became skeptical.

,,Don’t you have the feeling too to be suddenly – all small?”, he watched the giant orange slightly disturbed, ,,As if you had dwindled, and an orange would be huge suddenly?”

,,No”, I grabbed for a piece of pomelo, ,,It tastes… interesting.”

He took a bite too, and eyed the piece warily. Despite we both had bitten of something of it hardly a quarter was missing: ,,I feel like a dwarf… Like Gulliver in the land of the giants!”

I remembered this story, I had heard about it as of curiosity and later real fascination I had begun to read, listen or watch opuses of the humans.

,,Can I have it, too?”, I took the pomelo. It weighed aquedatly to its size and my hands looked hilariously tinny under this over dimensioned fruit, and yet its inside, its skin and even the white threads around its pulp resembled so grotesquely an orange. Suddenly I understood what John had meant.

,,I… I feel shrinked now, too. Here. You can have it back.”

,,Marvelously…”, he rocked the fruit with a shake of his head and gleefully in his hands. Even at the private meeting afterwards warmth ascended in my heart at the memory of my mate and how much he had delight in this simple fruit, and I had to hold back an laugh as I thought at the dialogue about being shrinked.

 

Yet in the Civil War I did not thought at John as soon as I entered the Sharlin cruiser, had no time to think at him. At the shuttle hangar I wondered how Susan would bear losing yet another person who was close to her when I sacrificed myself. And my people. Don’t think about their situation. Not at the places I had marveled over as child and that were just ruins and memories anymore. Not at the future. Just at the plans I had to undertake, and not at my whole culture, society, the peace and the synergy of the three castes I had so foolishly conceived as everlasting. I thought at the past Neroon and I had once, and chased this memory away to concentrate fully on my plan to imply him. I thought at Lennier who had sacrificed himself again and about what would become of him without him. Could he have lead my people instead of me?

And in what I thought to be my last moments as I stood in the circle of the Starfire and burned slowly, I looked in his face and saw his silent horror. _I am so sorry that I have to leave you behind with this burden, Lennier. But you are the only person I can imagine for it._

Then I spoke to my people, raised my arms and only thought at the future I had created for the Minbari and to where my soul would arrive now.

Instead Neroon died for me.

Somewhen later I came back to Babylon 5, and John closed his arms around me and said me how much he had missed me and how much he had worried and that I should rejoice, because I had won. Yet I did not feel happy. How strange how low it made me feel. It was peace at least after all (but what meant that in face of everything that had been destroyed?).

,,He is your enemy. He doesn’t deserves that you mourn for him!”, John meant.

I didn’t even told him that he had been my first lover and how much I missed him really, despite we had been enemies for the last ten years.

Yet he had accompanied me my whole live. It had been an established constant in my childhood and youth that Neroon of the Warrior Caste came around all few weeks, and I never questioned it or even tried to find out why he visited my clan at all back then. He was my friend, almost something like my mate or how could have been called what had been between the two of us, ally in the Earth-Minbari-War and finally my arch enemy. But he had always been there. I could not comprehend how he could suddenly only be ashes at the rock temple of Varenni anymore.

 

There was no time to doubt as we got to war against the dictatorial regime of Earth Alliance. I had to develop battle plans and seek allies, so I wasn’t allowed to lose myself in something as unimportant as these doubts. And not in the tinny unease about how we should behave and the way how we both suddenly shyed away from closeness between me and my trusty attaché, closest confidant I felt despite all, even if I suppressed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope the retold parts of canon are not to boring if one knows the series.  
> And I really love how the Pomelo-scene turned out. It is such a miniature of how this relationship works but also how they behave around each other and what misses, despite being a funny , happy scene.  
> Also, that bit of Delenns past with Neroon… I didn’t even ship them at first but after other people pointed it out I couldn’t unsee it and always thought they shared a past with each other.  
> The next chaper will focus more on Delenns troubled relationship with Lennier.


	3. So Dark and Thrilled I Can't Disguise

**_So Dark and Thrilled I Can’t Disguise_ **

 

A part of me had noticed that Lenniers fidelity to me consisted of more than just devotion and deep, unconditional friendship. Yet I never truly believed he could love me. Not really. I knew religious devotion towards me, and Lennier, pious and hardworking as he was showed it like this of course.

I didn’t believed it even as I found his open diary on his desk searching after an already weeks old report. He had told me several times about it. History fascinated him and he had thought about that that what we witnessed about history was always but a look at the past from the present. He could have feel that he stood in the midst of events that would become history and he wanted to capture in his chronicles for future historians how it is to be inside history, how it is if it is still present. He had filled half a dozen silvern-grey ornated books and I wondered how much of his free time he had sacrificed for this project.

I didn’t even read it deliberately, my gaze just grazed it and my brain feed in the signs as text in my consciousness automatically.

,,…upon that it is not the reason for her love. I know she is so much wiser than I and I should cling to her judgement, even if I do not understand it, yet as much as I try, I don’t manage to believe that she is right. She becomes different if she is with Starkiller. Yet she isn’t more herself as without him, how I thought at the beginning. I know her long enough to know that her true self doesn’t looks like that – or do I just presume that? She is not so clingy and dependent and in need of protection. Innocent. I know she is strong enough to behave only in the way she herself wants, and still she does it. Yet why? Does she want to be as she wasn’t since her unforgiveable mistake at the war against earth, and becomes it with Starkiller? Then he does not know how her true self looks like. And he will never find out. He doesn’t remembers how Jeffrey Sinclair was almost ready to shot her because he feared her so much. He will never learn that she started the war. Starkiller only knows his own picture of her, and it almost seems to me as if she would try to become it, because she isn’t the leader of the Minbari anymore then. It hurts so much seeing how she, wise, intelligent, powerful, the most wonderful person I ever met, degrades herself down to the cliché of an clingy human affair. Every time when she whimpers in this helpless, not at all fitting tone of voice ,,Oh John!” I want to plea her to stop, not just because it reminds me once more that I am not worthy of her, but too because I can’t bear to see her humiliated like this, when she is strong and smart enough to help herself. Would he force her to it, I could at least fight against him and it would be easier to bear, yet like this… It hurts so much. These feelings hurt so incredibly much.

She was even before the transformation, before the war with the humans a citizen of the universe instead of just an Minbari and I know she suffered from it. Now she can finally live it. And I wish so much this would be the only reason why she sais to love Starkiller. But the Dreaming shows us the truth, even when we don’t want to believe it. And it showed the war. Even when she is right with her explanation, it doesn’t shows that this terrible conclusion is not a truth, because truths can exist beside each other, they don’t exclude each other. I wish I could forget it, or at least not believe it… to see her with this human who, contradictory to Jeffrey Sinclair, hardly has anything in common with her is even more horrid.

Wouldn’t it be logical, that she can only gain forgiveness trough a human? Trough this one human, this hero of war, who holds her for innocent…”

The page ended. I only stared at his tiny hand writing, and strangly was not angry about him presuming such lies about the other half of my soul could be a truth only he knew. Such smugness I didn’t knew from Lennier, why did he write something like this suddenly? And yet I felt no fury. Not even betrayal.

Sure, as I had came to know John I had done more naïve and insecure than I was to gain his trust, yet this were means I controlled to use them for my goals. I was completely aware of how I used my behavior, or not?

Then cold, crushing realization crept up in my consciousness but I wrestled it down, before it could reach my mind, and thought the whole day only empty thoughts in front of an vapid feeling that Lennier still had not managed to extinguish his prediuces against humans.

 

Just at night, when in half-sleep I couldn’t be controlled enough the words crept in my consciousness. I had to think at this presumptuous line ,,I don’t have anything against alien rituals, especially not with a woman as beautiful as you”. My to expected reaction would have been to enlighten him assertive, though not aggressively  that this was derogatory about my culture and me and he should mind in future to not accidently say something like this again, because I wouldn’t tolerate this offence against my culture and my honor. I hadn’t done it, not even thought about it. Because I loved John? Or because… _She becomes exactly what she is not_. But I was happy with him. The war meant nothing anymore. Despite he was Starkiller. Then it overcame me coldly, and I didn’t want to know the rest of the thought, yet I didn’t manage anymore to force it back.

I felt save _just because_ he was Starkiller.

I didn’t thought about it anymore too, after this night. But one can’t make thoughts unthought. And at the next night, after the next exhaustion after an far to long space battle the realization came back and proceeded, proceed and proceed.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the core piece of the story where it starts to change from canon. I didn’t wanted it to look to much as if a man (Lennier) had to tell Delenn why her relationship with Sheridan isn’t so perfect at all, but she did needed a little push in the right direction because in canon she clearly never realizes or at least doesn’t wants it to be true. I hope I managed this tightrope walk.   
>  Anyway, this is the way I interpret the Delenn/Sheridan relationship, and the reason why it scares me  
>  Please comment, I’m always happy about comments and likes!


	4. Nights Like This

**_Nights Like This_ **

 

And then suddenly Lennier quitted his assignment as my attaché. It happened so unexpected. In one moment I just expected another exhausting day with our shared dinner as to look forward. And then I already stood in front of the Cyberport and tried to understand. He had sworn to never leave me. How could he leave me behind like this? Just like that?

How ought my live look like without him at my side? I could not imagine it. And yet already tomorrow he wouldn’t be here anymore.

I stood with John beside Londo at the sickbay, but my thoughts were just as much with Lennier as with the Centauri ambassador. Some when John broached Lenniers dismissal.

,,Yeah, I was afraid of that.”, not compassionately, just triumphantly, as if something had been proved he had claimed the whole time but nobody had believed him.

,,As we say back on earth: Three is a crowd.”, now a slight hesitation, a slight insecurity lurked into his voice.

,,On Minbar, three is sacred.”, I said and couldn’t think at nothing else than the lostness in Lenniers eyes and how he tried to cover it with an smile.

John sounded amused and worn out as he tried to help me. He smiled, but looked down: ,,Well, I think I’m not ready to handle that one, Delenn.”

Dozens of feelings shot through me. Fury, fear, betrayal, sharp longing and things I couldn’t even grasp. Yet dull pain washed them away already. Lennier was gone. Gone, gone, gone.

 

I had to see Lennier just one last time, and so I went to the waiting area. Lennier stood between the two rows of Anla’Shok and looked incredibly young and small and fragile between them.

,,Not even a goodbye, Lennier?”

He turned and walked slowly towards me until he stood closely before me.

,,No, never goodbye.”, he smiled, as if I would be the one who had to be comforted, ,,I’m yours forever, Delenn. Heart, body and soul.”, how tender he sounded, ,,I will see you again in a little while and perhaps… I will be a better person.”

,,That’s  not possible, Lennier.”, only after I had said it aloud I really understood what my words meant. Faltering, I added: ,,But you’re welcome to try.”

Suddenly I didn’t managed to continue anymore. As if the words would make it true permanently: ,,Be well, my dear and good friend.”

He bowed with his hands folded to a triangle. ,,And you.”, he managed to say. His voice broke and with it something inside my heart.

I just stood there as he was gone, unable to do anything other than look at where he had stood until just a few seconds ago. And then John arrived. He had waited here. The whole time. Had been present the whole time during our talk that actually had been far to knowing and intimate to be overheard by him.

But I had no energy anymore to be angry.

At least he didn’t say any more things like at sick bay, I know I couldn’t have borne it. He only led me away, and asked: ,,Shall I accompany you? Can I do anything for you”

,,No”

 

I laid in my bed alone and had given up trying to sleep long since. In a dull way I was relieved not to have John with me. I couldn’t have bore the things he said, the certainty, yes, presumptuousness in his voice, the way he treated me as if he would have to protect me and how he explained things to me I was aware of long since, his damn smile and his body stretched out on my bed.

At the evening I had still felt anger and betrayal, but now I was too tired even for that. All that remained was suffocating sadness.

I tried to meditate but I hadn’t worked even as I was lesser worn out by tiredness and painful thoughts. Essentially I knew that it was a futile case. I had to think at Susan and her hour of the wolf. Yes, I understood what she meant. She was gone too. I was absolutely alone.

I wished I could speak with her. I wished I could talk with Mayan or Lennier. Our farewell proceeded again and again in front of my minds eye, like a broken hologram player. I tried to imagine his large blue eyes, his lean and yet soft features, his smile and almost heard his soft, calm, slightly hesitant voice: ,,I’m yours forever, Delenn. Heart, body and soul.”

It was comforting and painful at the same time.

 _Heart_ , body and soul. He loved me. But he could not love me. Even now I knew that he couldn’t possibly love me, at most a saints figure with my name. He still knew who I truly was, how could he have loved me?

Heart, body and _soul_. He was so innocent, even now. Even after I had ripped him in darkness with me, in all these battles and political intrigues and death. I had transformed this innocent, naïve young priest into this lost, broken man. And he had never even tried to escape me. He let himself be destroyed by me willingly, for a higher good. And he even continued still after he had left me, with the Anla’Shok.

Heart, _body_ and soul. His body was mine. He had gifted it to me. I could do with it what I wanted. Everything I wanted and he would give it to me. To sent him into death. Or… Suddenly an eminently vivid picture appeared in front of my mind’s eye how Lennier gave himself over to me.

I felt my heartbeat in my whole body, and something cramped in my loins and eased with an hot shock, so heavy that I gasped for air.

But it did not left satisfaction or lust, only dull pain in my soul.

I turned around and closed my eyes in another attempt to sleep doomed to fail. I remembered this one night shortly after I had become a half-human, as it still had unsettled me to much to sleep alone. I remembered how I had snuggled up to him and how his body felt like. Firm trough his muscles wiry from fight training and yet soft, slim and so wonderfully warm trough the fabric of his nightgown. He had closed his arms around my back and my head rested on his chest. How much I would have liked to lie here with him just like this. Just lying there, no sex ( despite the idea, as I realized, didn’t repulsed me. I did not lust after him, but it wouldn’t bother me the slightest to express our closeness in this way). I would only be me, secure, not the ruthless leader who had started the war against the humans and who had pulled so many others into death anymore, despite deep down I knew that I could have this kind of security only with John.

This wish unsettled me much more than sexual fantasies could have. These were mostly (even if not always) only expression of feelings not deeper than physical desire and arousal after all. I still liked to think at gorgeous humans I met or some of the characters from this century-old human science fiction series that’s parables and optimism I liked so much, and would have never have the idea this could show any problem in my relationship. It meant nothing. But this wish…

Something in the subtle humming of the stations engines changed, Babylon 5 had almost run through its night cycle.

Did Lennier lay awake at this moment too? Did he think at me as I thought at him? The imagination had something comforting to it.

 

,,Establishing link to… Yeestrell… on the Ardel’Shaoulo.”, said the mechanical voice of the Babcom. Ruuls idea to take an attaché from each caste appealed me and I already had left him my instructions for the Religious Caste and Warrior Caste yet I wanted to take care of this one myself.

A face resurfaced from the deeps of the screen, as light brown as dry leaves on the forest floor, broad, angular jaw, flat, triangular nose, the face framed with the geometrically cut bone crest of Worker Caste.

,,Ambassador Delenn, uniter of the worlds?”, Yeestrell sounded surprised.

Her salutation reminded me at that I as a matter of fact with my allies I had made true what I had dreamed of my whole life. I should have been happy.

The sensor-informatician had recovered herself again and I could see clearly how she sat up more upright as a gesture of respect. She sat in a room that with its plain coziness probably was the cantina of the space ship, and behind her, almost out of the picture, I saw some other people of the crew cheering to each other. Yeestrells eyes too sparked with excitement and her mouth dimpled with rejoce.

,,Forgive me, did I disturb you at something?”

,,No forgiveness required.”, Yeestrell bowed slightly to late, ,,We only just finished the examination of a Tanvall-singularity.”

,,A black hole and an neutron star that are in orbit around each other, surrounded by a gas nebula, if I’m right?”

,,Yes. I was quite difficult without being ripped apart by the tidal forces, but damn fascinating. Compliment that you know this term.”

The conversation reminded me at afternoons so long ago and the scientific newsletters I had read back then beside everything else lonely in the library: ,,As a child I always wanted to become high priestess of cosmology. Until as a teenager I noticed that I could only  calculate far to slowly for this and furthermore owned an far higher talent for politics.”

,,Physician.”, Yeestrell smiled approvingly. But as she noticed my still blank expression her grin vanished apruptly.

,,Why did you made contact with me?”

,,I request you as my attaché.”

,,But what is with this cute, shy boy who fitted so perfectly to you?”

I only realized that I had breathed out pain-filledly as I saw the dismay in her eyes.

,,Damn. I… I am so sorry. I am so sorry for you, Delenn. I ask for forgiveness for my missing caution. Damn.”

All these years as politician and I still almost didn’t managed to hold back the tears.

,,I would look forward the beginning  of your service as soon as it is possible for you.”

,,I am honored to be able to work for you.”, Yeestrell bowed, then she ended the line. I let myself sunk back into my bureau chair.

 

I had really done it. I had united Minbari, humans, Narn, Centauri and all the other worlds of the Interstellar Alliance, we had truly a chance to become citizens of the universe instead of just our home planets now. As I had been my whole life, but had believed it only to be a shame and had hidden it. Yet now I truly helped to construct the new united community of nations. During all the council sessions, conferences, elaboration of laws and votes, during all of my political work I was happier than ever before. My dream had become reality. True, there been discordances about the constitution, the attacks by unknown groups against our ships and then there was the telepath problem. But I had been politician for to long to could have actually believed problems wouldn’t occur.

Only at my free time sometimes dull pain overcame me. I couldn’t undergo the morning rituals with Lennier and breakfast with him. I couldn’t eat the dinner he had cooked with him after exhausting negotiations. I missed him when I read and he didn’t sat beside me, reading quietly too. Or when I just wanted to talk. Yeestrell was decent, yet when she talked then actually quite loud and energic. Her down to earth pragmatism differed so much from Lenniers deep believe.

I wished I could spent my free time with him again, only a few hours. I had neglect that after more and more often spending time with John. How could I have wasted something so precious?

In contrast to before John and I now had time for each other, because all the wars to fight where finally over. For the first time I realized how difficult that was. He called my favorite series and the books I read ,,flights of fancy” and ,,unrealistic” and ,,waste of time”. Even with all my diplomatic experience I couldn’t understand what use there was in smacking a bat against a ball and then run, and even lesser in watching other people oranges eating and shouting in television. We could have flowing conversations, yet not about the topics that moved me deep inside. About him I did not know. Did he actually had such topics or was his mind so straightforward and uncomplicated that something like this just didn’t exist for him?

But of course I was happy with him. Our love was as romantic and superficial and perfect like in a bad love story. But love never had been so easy for me.

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave comments and/or Kudos if you read this. I would be very happy about that


	5. I Become Afraid

**_I Become Afraid_ **

 

At the first moment the announcement Lennier would come to visit me filled me with fear, despite I had longed for his presence. Fear about how the things between us had changed? But it didn’t felt like this, rather like something else, hardly to grasp at all. And a tiny part of me, a part that disturbed me was happy that he was away. It almost soothed this part how he became more and more distant, just to not be exposed to the threat he posed, because he knew who I was.

 

As I saw him again then, finally, at the Day of the Dead of the Brakiri he had changed. The Anla’Shok uniform was more formfitting than what I had seen him in before. It suited him. He truly was nobody one looked at and thought how gorgeous he was after the first look, yet he was beautiful indeed, in an unobtrusive, androgynous way. Maybe it was actually more something about construing the strangeness in his appearance as interesting instead of repulsing. Irritated, I pushed the thought away.

 

The shy, insecure boy didn’t exist anymore. Lennier answered confident and unapproachably on my questions. I had always wished he could find a way for himself. But I realized that he actually did not seemed like himself anymore. Becoming Anla’Shok didn’t fit to him. I did not want him to change. He had been so wonderful after all, I wanted that he stayed like he was.

I thought about it as he was already away again. What an irony that he of all people, who had claimed that I would deny myself in front of John to do penance, now tried to become something he absolutely was not to serve our people, me, better.

 

And finally this thought brought me back to the old claim I would become different as soon as I was with John. It followed me at night, and some when, as my resistance had become too weak, I couldn’t bear it any longer and decided to pay attention for I always behaving just like I would have done normally, and to look what happened. It couldn’t happen anything anyway, this claim wasn’t true. What do I had to lose?

 

At first it were only moments where I had this thought randomly and I spoke in front of the council or pointed out a mistake to John or stand up for something and realized only afterwards that I indeed would have just stood friendly quiet beside him, hadn’t I paid attention to it. Sometimes John looked at me as if he wouldn’t have expected that even the slightest. I didn’t thought about it. It would have been to disturbing.

 

The political situation became worse. It hurt to see my dream threatened like this, as if these unknown attackers and conflicting people would directly assail me deep inside. But finally there was something I could fight for again. Only now I realized how much I had missed this.

John didn’t have even remotely enough political experience to perform not only as commander of Babylon 5 but as president of the Interstellar Alliance in this conflict – a title that was much more built for me and that I had given to Sheridan only in a emergency situation – and so I had to lead him and discuss with him what I thought was best for the situation. I was the woman again I had been since my entrance  of the Grey Council, the powerful and wise leader, and it felt good.

 

The dreams had returned. I was in the Earth-Minbari-war and commanded battles and realized only afterwards that I had killed my human friends.

Most often it was Jeffrey Sinclair whose squad I attacked. The canons of my Sharlin cruiser destroyed his formation, our fast movers hunted the ones of the humans. And then our cannons ripped apart the cockpit, and wild exultation rose in me – until the body of an human drifted past me, his face so terribly familiar.

Or I had fought against an human cruiser, and shreds of the hull and the bridge flew in space, frozen in their movement, and in between all these debris a human woman floated, skin frozen in vacuum. Susan.

But this time I walked trough a corridor with Dukhat, and we talked. Yet as I turned, he had vanished in the grey half-darkness. Panicked I searched for him, and as I didn’t found him, deep pain overcame me. I knew I would never see him again. All our moments together, only memories anymore.

My eyes darted around, and meet an human who strut trough the corridor, so presumptuous as if it would belong to him. I would not tolerate that he took over my culture like this. I would not let him conquer what made me. I would not give up myself.

He attacked, still smiling presumptuously. I held a Denn’Bok in my hands and blocked with it, before bashing after him. Soon my attacks broke through his defense, and the sensation of how my fighting staff hit his flesh felt damn good. I would come back at him for what he did to my people.

I hit his neck and he went to the ground choking, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. My hate and my fury and my desperation burned strong as ever.

I felt his skin burst open under my blows, felt his bones smash and burning gratification rushed through my body.

But then my eyes met his face. It was John. He lay there motionlessly, not at all the bloody mass he should have been after my attacks, rather almost untouched, draped and as if he would only sleep, and even in death still wonderfully handsome like the paintings of murdered younglings by old masters of my people. A thin trickle of blood sprung out of his beautiful lips and sidled down his cheek.

I awoke filled with horror, gasping for air. My whole body was covered in sweat. Almost panicked I stared to John beside me and hoped he wouldn’t have become aware of it. Likely he would just continue sleeping. If I learned anything from my relationship with Neroon then it was that warriors weren’t easily woken by anything short of an alert or an order. But John stirred and suddenly I felt terribly at mercy of him.

,,Delenn, everything alright? You look disturbed.”

Suddenly I wished Jeff were here in his place. Jeff knew who I was. For a moment I wondered what would have happened if he still would have been here? He would have understood me. I wouldn’t have been alone. If Jeff would have been still here it would have been at least not quite as terrible for Lennier to see me in a relationship with Jeff instead of John, the human.

It still didn’t feel as if he would have been dead since over a thousand years. Only as if he would still live, just at a place I couldn’t reach. Had I loved him? I wished so much he would be still here.

,,Is really everything okay?”

,,Yes.”, I said with a weak smile, ,,Go back to sleep.”

 

Then, after I had sent Lennier to find the persons behind the attacks on my own autority, it escalated.

I refused to believe that Lennier was dead. I didn’t even permit the possibility. How could have everything on the station continued normally, how could have the negotiations proceed just like that, how could have John and mine relationship just continue to be the acclaimed political symbol if Lennier was dead?

I thought at our last meeting in the bar, at how the light illuminated Lenniers eyes only and left the rest of his face in half darkness, at the look in his eyes. Unconditional obedience, love, determination, fear, brave despair and even more I wasn’t sure about. Could this truly be desire? I remembered how smooth his cheek felt like under my fingers, how our knees touched in the narrow hallway… Don’t think about it. Don’t remember our meeting. Yet I had felt like myself, like a Minbari during it. And despite I was aware that I sent him into certain death this feeling had, for a tiny moment, not even disturbed me.

I saw Vir stroll down the Zocalo and tried to block out that I had to tell it to him as soon as I was certain. Later John did everything to comfort me, yet I realized that I was completely alone now. I felt just as lonely as back then directly after my transformation. So I had pulled all of my allies into doom, except for John, and he too would die in only twenty years.

And then he said, not even self-congratulatory, just regretful: ,,Because of that I didn’t wanted you to sent him. I knew all along how much this would hurt you.”

I was to dull to respond anything. I knew he just wanted to help me, but it felt as if he would want to use this terrible situation as well to confirm that he had been right and to undercut my authority. I knew he didn’t really do this, he was far to good-natured for it, but damn, it felt like this. I didn’t want having to deal with this accusations. I didn’t have enough power for it anymore. Yet as he repeated later: ,,You acted against my direct order, despite I just wanted to protect you.”, I couldn’t remain silent anymore, even when it felt wrong, as if speaking now would be nothing I would do, or maybe even just because _I_ would do it.

I knew that it was morally wrong to sent somebody into death, yet what alternatives did I have if I did it for a greater good? Even if it was my closest friend.

,,I am Entil’Zha. I command over the fleet of the alliance. Which one of my subordinated people I give which order is only my area of responsibility, your authorization only reaches about the rough frame or our missions. Especially you as _president_ should know that.”

Even he was aware of who of us possessed the most political competence.

For a moment he stared at me, then he repeated: ,,I wanted to spare you this pain. I wanted to protect you.”

,,I don’t need to be protected, John. I manage this very well alone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for this really brutal dream about Delenn killing Sheridan, but then, Delenn is such a dark character and it would have felt wrong to leave her dark parts out, and the story is partly about her having to accept that there is no way to forget what she did in her past and who she is, and the Earth-Minbari war is a big part of that.
> 
> I already uploaded this because I am not sure if I will have Internet this evening.
> 
> As always, please leave comments, I would love to read them


	6. Of The Darkness

**_Of the Darkness_ **

 

But ultimately Lennier returned, along with an record that could mean the end of peace. But he lived. I nearly wanted to continue like always, and just expect that everything between us would turn to the better trough simple waiting. But now I had realized that I couldn’t bear to lose him too. I couldn’t save John anymore. But maybe still him. And now, as again a realistic chance existed that he or I would be killed in the next months I couldn’t just live further unknowing. I finally had to try to solve this, permanently.

,,Lennier?”

He wheeled around, and something about his posture, about how he clutched his own fingers, let me realize how disturbed he still must have been. He had witnessed an massacre not even one day ago. I had tried already yesterday to help him as much as possible trough my experience with coming to terms with it, yet his records were too important to not submit them to the assembly and we didn’t had more than an quarter-hour. I should have continued to help him today. I didn’t want to have to do this to him too. But who knew if I would have the possibility to ever ask him again? And so I concocted the words, against all my thoughts that I wasn’t allowed to spoil his honor in such a way with inconveniencing him.

,,I… I already sent the records to all experts for analysis.”, the old hesitation in his voice was there again. Maybe the insecure, wonderful boy from back then did still exist underneath the mantle of confidence.

I didn’t wanted to inflict him this pain. But I couldn’t bear to not have certainty finally.

,,I am not here to talk about tactical analysis with you.”

He stood completely quiet, only a short flinch of his eyes revealed his unease.

I overcame myself to speak the next words: ,,Our friendship changed, and now, in this time I can’t bear not to know it.”, even just saying it aloud and acknowledging the possibility seemed absurd to me. And I didn’t want to know his reaction: ,,Do you love me?”

His eyes flashed up, broken and defiant like of a person who knows that they lost and can’t do anything more than stare at their debaser full of anger and still withstanding. His eyes already shimmered with tears, and he blinked to hold them back. Then he looked down swiftly, and I saw how his iris flickered back and forth under golden eyelashes.

I didn’t know what I assumed he would answer. Everything he did indicated that he loved me, in my mind I knew it, but in my heart I still didn’t believe it. And yet I didn’t really expected an deny.

,,Yes.”, his voice was clipped, as if he would want to get over with it fastly.

I heard myself, dull and tonelessly like from far away: ,,What?”

,,I love you, Delenn.” I didn’t manage to look at him. His words sounded strangely prosaically, not at all as humble and tender as I would have expected from this sentence.

Even now I could hardly believe it. It could only be a mistake. He couldn’t possibly truly love me. I did not deserve that.

,,I… I feel honored.”

And yet… hadn’t I not always suspected it, even if I never believed it possible?

There had to be rituals for this situation. Everything became easier if one structured it with rituals. Yet if there were ones, they didn’t occurred me, because I had never considered to ever need them.

,,I am sorry, Lennier. Please give me some time, I have to think about this first. I get in touch again when I found an answer.”

As I left the room, I finally did manage to glance at him. An single tear now ran down his cheek indeed, yet even like this he managed to put my wellbeing over his and smiled at me encouraging.

 

I had to talk with John. My new knowledge must not put a strain on us (but wasn’t our love not just at least to a part an attempt of my subconsciousness to do penance, anyway?). After all our love was such an important political symbol (I justified it with its political significance, was that truly the most important for me?) and we were meant for each other (we had nothing in common). Trough him I even could forget my hate between our peoples (and this was the reason why I loved him) and he had forgiven me (he had not, how could he if he didn’t even knew what I had done).

 

,,Does all of this stress you to much?”, John asked me after the next negotiation – this time with some decidedly exasperated and disturbed Narn. I was close to give a laugh. For over fifteen years I had been Satai, had lead the Earth-Minbari-War, had been the driving force behind opening the Minbari for other peoples after a thousand years of isolation, had fought in the shadow war, ended the civil war on my own planet and without being the slightest bit presumptuous I could say that without me the Interstellar Alliance would have never came into being. And he really asked me if this, a simple betrayal of confidence and slight raids by allies that not even constituted an existential threat, stressed me to much?

,,Lennier loves me.”, I said tonelessly, ,,I have asked him this morning.”

,,That had actually been clear since a while. I know something like this is depressing, but just say him as gently as possible that you don’t reciprocate it.”, he let it sound so easy. Probably it was for John with his wonderfully straightforward, always solution-focused way.

But that was not the problem. I did not love Lennier. At least not in this unconditional, deep way he loved me. But I also did not love him not. He meant so much to me, and I knew I couldn’t live without him, he was my closest confidant and yet his closeness, our bond scared me and as much as I wanted him I wanted him as far away from me as possible. It was far too complicated to force it into this simple words.

,,Delenn, the boy then just has to handle that on his own. He is an grown man, its time that he breaks away from his little puppy love.”

,,This very clearly is no puppy love.”, I was surprised myself how ice cold angry my voice sounded, ,,Just now he had risked his live for me for the uptenth time, let himself rather be outcast by his clan than leave me – do you even know what that means for a Minbari? – and he supported me as nobody else did. He lived directly beside me, he is far to close to me to make mooneyes at some delusion of me. I know he did not act like this because of a little infatuation, but from deep loyalty.”

,,I am acquainted with something like this, you know.”, John smiled commiseratively and his voice sounded lecturing and this time, this single time, it repelled me, ,,We all actually had a crush on a teacher at some point, damn, me too.”

,,What gave you the idea to understand this better than I? You don’t even truly know Lennier.”, I breathed in deeply and tried to put myself in his position, ,,I know you are worrying about me and are angry about him loving me despite I am with you, and I am sorry that I have to include you in this matter. I”, I elaborated the words in my head once more, ,,want to finally find out what truly exists between me and Lennier.”

,,I know it is difficult to say a friend that you don’t love him and that you don’t want to harm your friendship.”

,,That is not how I meant it. If I knew what he meant to me I didn’t had to find out. You can tell me every suggestion how this could possibly the least uncomfortable for you.”

He just stared at me bewildered. ,,This is a joke!”, he laughed, ,,You don’t really want to start a relationship with him too just because he has a crush on you! With all due respect for your compassion, but that’s really too far!”

,,It is not just about him, but about the two of us.”

,,That…”, consternation resonated in his amused tone of voice, ,,You’re don’t really serious with that! Do I mean nothing to you?”

,,Of course.”, how could he doubt about that? Had I treated him so badly? I swallowed down the pain that threatened to choke me, ,,For this reason I wanted to talk with you to make everything as painlessly as possible for you. But Lennier means much to me too. I know that something like this is a taboo in your culture, but it wouldn’t change anything about our love. Just because one has one friend for experiencing new things all the time and one for deep talks this doesn’t dismishes these friendships, and here it would be just like this. I want this to happen in a setting that is bearable for you. It would be two completely different ways of relationships, of intimacy, of…”

I wasn’t sure if he actually listened to me: ,,You really want to cheat on me with your damn ex-attaché, just because this disgusting little wise ass whines at you that he is in love with you?”

Humans have such easy concepts. So straightforward. Even in their relationships. Easy and straightforward, just like John. I envied him for that. I wished I could be like this too. But I knew I would never be able to. I would never be able to be fully human, even if I tried to annihilate my Minbari-part. I was not so easy, my mind was too thrilled and dark and complicated. And in this moment panic fear to lose John overcame me, the secureness he provided.

,,By now he should finally realize that you belong with me.”

Quivering, scared anger crept up in me: ,,I don’t belong with you. I only belong to myself.”

He shook his head and meant baffled: ,,This is just an idiom. I didn’t mean it like that.”, he breathed in deeply and full of pain, and I almost couldn’t bear to see his expression, ,,You… you just feel so alien to me. Damn, Delenn, you ask to much of me.”

,,I know. And I am so incredibly sorry. I wouldn’t have wronged you like this if there would be any other way for me, but I just can’t simply send my closest friend back in darkness and I can’t bear to lose his friendship.” And not to know what I felt for him, but I didn’t manage to say this aloud.

John sounded tired: ,,Isn’t there one of these rituals?” His intonation clearly showed what he thought about ,,this rituals” and I didn’t knew why, yet for the very first time it upset me.

,,These rituals”, I responded, ,,are what makes me up.”

,,Delenn, you overcame so many other things, you don’t have to defer to his wishes. There surly is some ritual for.”

,,I won’t tolerate”, I said coldly, ,,that you treat me and my culture even just a single further time as disrespectful like this.”

John stared at me as if he absolutely couldn’t associate this with what he expected of me. I believe that in this moment for the first time he truly realized that I was indeed an extraterrestrial and not just an human woman with nice exotic blue patterns down her spine and bone crest between her hair and silly rituals.

,,Tell me one reason why I wouldn’t have the right for it.”, he snarled, and it sounded like one of his pathos-oozing speeches, ,,You’ve killed thousands of humans in the war, you would have extinct us if you wouldn’t have accidentally shoot yourself in the own feet because of Sinclair!”

He will realize it. He will realize who I truly am. I wanted away, just away, yet I couldn’t do anything other than staring in his face that blended with Cassuans in front of my minds eye. _I can’t look at you anymore without seeing the monster, Delenn. I can’t do this anymore._ I expected to hear it from him too at any moment.

,,Tell me one reason how after that I don’t have the right to not respect your culture.”

And suddenly I realized that he hadn’t even a single time let himself be fooled to learn anything about my culture.

,,This is true. But I would have the right to despise your culture just as much. And yet I decided to love you. I understand that some of our rituals or customs appear strange or plain idiotic to you, for me it isn’t different concerning the human culture. But you could at least try to understand it.”

,,I am not exactly the person who behaves disrespectful.”, he hissed, ,,How often did you withhold something from me, so that with the part of truth I possessed I had no other choice than to do exactly what you planned for me? You denied me the right to make my own decisions! That is dismissive, not to fall asleep at one of your boring dinner rites!”

He was right. And I hadn’t just done this with him, but also with Lennier, G’Kar, Jeffrey Sinclair…

,,I am diplomat. Sometimes I have to manipulate people to create a greater good for everybody.”, I responded tiredly, not even really to justify myself, but just to explain it to him.

,,And now you just decide in between to start a ménage a trios with Lennier. You just decide for me again. I am surprised that you actually told me about it at all.”

,,I could make this decision because it involves something that takes place between me and Lennier. For us Minbari such an occurrence would be so private that it wouldn’t concern anybody other than the two parties concerned. And I told you about it because trough the different morality of your culture it would have impact on our relationship too.”

,,This is insane. Please, stop being so close-mouthed and cold and stop these power games. I don’t know what’s going on with you in the last few months, I don’t recognize you anymore. Delenn, I miss you. I feel as if I never really knew you, as if the person I fell in love with would have vanished. Become yourself again.”

 _This is myself, John._ Cold fear seized me.

Urgently, he grabbed my upper arm. Reflexively I freed myself with a fast circular motion of my arm I had learned in stuff fighting training. With so much power that his hand hit the metal wall beside us with an painfully sounding, loud whoomp.

He stared at me, and this time, he truly looked disturbed as he realized how strong I really was. I didn’t want to see this. I didn’t want to see again how somebody I loved looked at me like this.

,,Delenn, I can’t be with you any more if you seriously think about realizing this madness, and if I don’t recognize you anymore when I look at you.”

He blinked, and a tear run down his cheek. I had never seen him cry, I realized. I didn’t knew if I even had thought he would be able to at all, or if I had believed somebody so unflappable heroic and full of pathos that he simply swallowed all his pain and one could only recognize how broken he truly was if one knew about it, would simply be not able to. How vulnerable, how broken it made him look. He hadn’t deserved this, not as well after everything he had been through.

I did not want to lose him, but just as much I didn’t wanted to reject Lennier, the only person I could maybe possibly still save. And what other choice did I have? He was on the verge of realizing who I really was, and I couldn’t bear his lack of respect and presumptuousness any longer.

,,Good.”, I felt tears burning in my eyes yet I didn’t know if from panic or indeed from lovesickness, ,,Because I will do this.” And with that I walked away.

 

On the way back to the embassy I was still to dazed to feel anything. My body felt shaky as if I would have just lead a space battle and the stress hormones would cut out afterwards. Only as I bought spicy indish dumplings and swallowed them down without actually tasting them my body steadied.

For so long I had followed the prophecy that had told I would have an human mate. And now I had acted against it. But what did this prophecy still matter if it truly had only been written by Jeff under his true name to warn me? What did asserted fate matter after John and I had sent the gods away?

As I entered the embassy, Yeestrell and my military attaché sat in front of holograms and still analyzed the attacking ships from Lenniers record.

,,That these were Centauri ships was obvious from the first sight.”, my military attaché started, ,,But by now we also have more exact analysis of their weapons systems, their normal space and jump-engines and their build year.”

,,Begin with the report.”, I ordered.

I did not feel anything, neither lovesickness nor fear. Somehow I had expected some kind of mental demon mob would seize me as soon as I would lose Johns safety, would burry me underneath them so that I would never be able to feel anything except the darkness anymore. Irrational, but that was how it had felt like. Instead for the first time since years I felt the certainty to have found a way out of the problems between me and Lennier finally. For the first time since years everything was clear.

 

I could not sleep that night, as much as everything in me longed for rest. My dream of a united galaxy was at the verge of collapse. Londo had betrayed us. Lennier loved me.

The station ran further like always, the universe still stretched imperturbably around us and tomorrow would be another day full of diplomacy and politics like every other. Everything important was still like yesterday, since always. But John and I weren’t together anymore. A pain-filled whimper escaped me as I truly understood in the first place, pain that threatened to choke me no matter how much I tried to sob it out. For more than an hour I couldn’t stop crying.

 

John pulled me aside as we encountered at the next day. He looked like always, yet I knew that he only caged the pain inside him instead of dealing with it.

,,I am sorry if I hurt you. I know that your friendship with Lennier means much to you” – it surprised me that he was aware of that, and this fact shot bright pain through my heart. Had I truly believed he would know me so badly that he wasn’t even aware of that? - ,,and I am sure we find a true solution. Delenn, we were completely happy with each other! Whatever got wrong, why you behave so differently, I am sure it can become like before again.”

,,But would you be willing to accept who and what I am?”, I wanted to ask. Would I be willing to give it up? Now, as it was over, the thought of being with him and to do all these things together seemed not that worth striving for anymore.

,,We can’t turn back time. And did Londo not show us how dangerous it is wanting to restore something that is bygone?”, how strange that my voice sounded as if I would only explain an philosophical lecture, not as if it would be about my own life. But as I looked up I saw pain and disbelieve shining in Johns eyes, and I couldn’t, didn’t want to see that, I almost had bypassed this conference because I had wanted to avoid this moment.

,,It does not make any of the moments we shared lesser precious. All of this still exists, and I thank you to had this wonderful time with you.”

,,How can something be precious if it was just an illusion?”

He said aloud what I hadn’t dared to think. And then everything I hadn’t felt until now broke down over me. It was over. All the things I had done for the last time with him, and I hadn’t known that this would be the last time… I would have cherished these moments more if would I have known.

I just wanted back to my embassy and cry, and dully do nothing, because there wasn’t anything to do and to feel beside pain. But I owed John to end this in a proper way, and so I blinked the tears away.

,,I didn’t knew what alien morality you have. And everything just because of Lennier…”

,,Lennier is not the reason for our problem. He is only a victim of it, merely its catalyst.”

He nodded worn out. ,,You’re probably right.”

,,You and he…”, he spoke hesitantly, as if he had to force himself to speak it aloud. Suddenly the sureness and easygoingness so typical for him were gone from his voice, ,,or you and Sinclair too…. You look more fitting together than you and I… and not only because you are both Minbari.”

I didn’t managed anything else than smiling sadly.

,,In what an banal way such a everything overcoming love between former enemies ends.”, he mumbled.

,,Yes.” All this powerful political symbolism, just over like this. I had do find replacement, I realized dully. How cold and unromantic. ,,I suggest we let the attention on us subside slowly, human media is already down on us enough.”

He laughed sadly.

I breathed in deeply.

I already thought it would be over, as he raised his voice again and looked at me: ,,Well… Delenn, please say that there isn’t a ritual for breaking up. I couldn’t bear another damn ritual too, now.”

,,Of course.”, I mumbled. I would have to undergo the rituals alone, without them our relationship would have drifted half finished in the air forever. It didn’t even hurt me that he rejected it, it seemed completely consequent and natural to me.

,,Thank you for commanding beside me in the war and carrying the burden of the leader with me as I wouldn’t have managed it alone.”, I petted his arm. It felt wrong, ,,And for… finding healing through you” Healing for which price, but at least the beginning of healing.

,,I could finally get over my mourning for Anna. Thank you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just love the idea of non-monogamous Minbari culture. They are not simply more chaste than humans, they are just different, more structured. I already wanted to do this since I first read the amazing fics of the authors for this ship before me who all headcanon Minbari this way, and a dialogue about this text I had with another fan who truly is from an matriarchic, non-monogamous culture only encouraged me. 
> 
> I feel slightly bad for not managing to write it to a Delenn/Lennier/Sheridan OT3, but for me Delenn/Sheridan just was to badly fitting and dysfunctional to continue. And I promise that Sheridan finds somebody better fitting in this AU!
> 
> This was perhaps the hardest chapter to write, because I always wanted it to stay fair to Sheridan and don’t cast him in a too bad light despite how much I dislike him
> 
> Ah, and I will upload the last chapter at Wednsday instead of Thursday now
> 
> As always, please comment


	7. In My Heart

**_In My Heart_ **

 

Lennier sat with Vir in a bar at the Zocalo. I saw him while walking by, as I was on my way to another conference and to ruminate about it was the last thing I needed to deal with right now. His eyes were frozen on the untouched Virgin Colada in front of him and he looked tearstained, and Vir seemed as if he had tried to comfort him but only ended up overwhelmed and to upset about the suffering of his friend. I didn’t dare to interrupt them.

Only at the afternoon I could truly speak with Lennier, at anew allegation of the evidence he had found against the Centauri. Everybody had spoken themselves in rage so much that no reasonable discussion was possible anymore, and out of hand I had interrupted it with a five-minutes-break, and stood with Lennier in front of the conference hall.

,,John… broke up with me, as the humans would say.”, I said without any transition or conversation before, because nothing fitting would come to my mind.

Lennier smiled agonized: ,,This is not funny, Delenn.”

,,This is no joke.”

For a tiny moment hope flashed in his eyes and the corners of his mouth twitched, then dull hopelessness washed over his expression and his smile became a mask to hide the pain.

,,Do you want to tell about it or… would this be to painful and private? Can I do anything for you?”

I shook my head. And before anybody of us could say anything more, Londos nagging showed us that it resumed.

 

Through the political crisis I was so overworked that only at the next day I could find time. I sent Lennier an record via Babcom.

,,My dearest Lennier, herewith I now finally answer on your confession. I couldn’t truly believe that you in truth love me. You of all people, who followed me into the dreaming and knows that I started the war against the humans. Who was the closest to me in all these years and therefore understands the most how ruthless and manipulative I can be. But I feel deeply honored.

Can we meet tomorrow at 20:00 at the stone garden? This is the only timeframe of the next days where I have enough free hours, and I believe the peace there would do both of us good. Consider this indeed as Arok’va, as ritual for approach and estimation.”

 

Should I put on an human dress, like at my first date with John? But it was human clothing, and Lennier was not the kind of person who would pay attention to something like that. Rather I should feel comfortable in it. In any case I had hardly any time left after the meeting. So I kept on the blue robe I wore.

At the part of Babylon 5 that housed the landscape site, bending up in the distance and meeting itself again over my head, it already started to dawn. The planet had already slid half in front of the suns. I appeared at the stone garden first. I should have sat down and followed the lines the stones pushed over with my mind, yet I just had to move. I walked from one end of the garden to the other and back, and then once again the same.

Finally Lennier arrived at the passage to the stone garden. His eyes were downcast and he fiddled around with his fingers in an attempt doomed to fail to calm himself down. Only hesitantly he came up to me.

He didn’t wore the ranger-uniform anymore, but an grey-golden top of which I couldn’t surly say if it was an Minbari robe or just an elegant human jacket that snuggled tightly onto his slender torso and cloth trousers that were brown as well. It stretched over his thighs and I marveled at how such a slim man could have such well-toned legs.

,,I have all my civilian clothes at Minbar, so I had no other option than buying something here…”, he meant apologetically.

,,No need to apologize. It pleases me.”

He nodded and smiled nervously. Somewhat uncertain we stood a few meters apart from each other.

,,Sit down.”, I went to the stone bench and pointed beside me. He sat with proper distance to me. It hurt to observe how my closest friend hold stands clear of me like this.

The first hour we talked about things that didn’t affected us.

,,The geography of the station is fascinating, isn’t it?”, I said in an attempt to start a conversation doomed to fail.

,,Yes.”, he meant, but kept silent then.

The silence suffocated me, and so I replied, just to say something: ,,Back then I had been on dozen foreign planets in course of my diplomatic career but never on a human station yet, but only on their planets. Just the concept of creating artificial gravity through spin, that is centrifugal force, I found stunning. It was, in a certain way, so much bigger than just creating artificial gravity deck to deck. I still remember how I saw the landscape site for the first time. Jeff arranged a private tour for me.” It still felt unreal that he had travelled thousand years back in time. That he was dead since a millennium by now. That he was Valen. Jeff, this beautiful, intelligent, insightful human with whom I could have such deep conversations.

,,I only heard half of what he said. That simply couldn’t be all my experience said me. I could not be real that fields bended up at horizon and meet again over me, instead of the sky or at least a ceiling floating over it. I saw it with my own eyes and yet I expected it could only be a trick of my senses. I surly took three months until I had got used to it.”

,,I had never be in space, I had never even left my monastery except for excursions to the next biggest cities and was completely overwhelmed. Everything was so wide and absolutely different than what I had seen until then.”, his eyes were directed at the fields that bend upwards in front of him, and his eyes sparked. He still looked past me. Maybe it was better like this for now.

,,I hardly managed to comprehend what I had to do next, so difficult it was to process all this foreignness.”, he continued, ,,And then Babylon 5… This part of the station I saw for the first time as I was searching for you a few weeks after the festival of the cultures.”

,,Yes, I remember this.”

,,Somebody had vaguely described to me how I could reach the stone garden, and I set foot on the way, and my gaze suddenly meet the pillar structure and the train. I stared up and tried to understand. It is true, it truly is an extraordinary viewing experience.”

He smiled. This time the nervousness and the pain were almost vanished from it, and it only showed his excision. How narrow Lenniers lips were. A pink with an rusty-brown cast, clearly definated from the pale white of his skin. The sweep of his upper lip. The small dimples when he smiled. What a cute smile if one let oneself in for its specialness.

,,Our first space stations created their gravity through spinning too.”, he continued. He talked further, some when the topic changed to the slowly deceasing light and then to the stone garden. Yet in between again and again moments developed in which we fell quite and the silence felt painful. Filled with everything we had to say but couldn’t still.

,,How long already?”, I managed to ask in the second hour.

,,Excuse me?”, Lennier turned towards me, and seemed once again only the anxious prospective attaché from back then.

,,How long do you already love me?”

,,I am not sure.”, he remained silent, and I knew he wouldn’t say more wouldn’t I probe into. And so I looked at him expectant until he finally continued talking, ,,I knew from the first moment on that I want to accompany you and unconditionally support you, if I would want to serve the Minbari in the best way possible. But I am not sure after when I just would have done everything for you because you were Satai, and after when I truly did it for your vision. For you. At the beginning you were more like the infinity of space, like the millennium-old system of our society, so powerful and wise and sublime, and it seemed so surreal to me that at the same time you talked to me, stood beside me. And you befriended me, me of all people, a simple monk from an backward mountain clan, who…”, his voice shook, ,,… can’t even serve his people good enough. You are still so sublime for me.”

No. Did he only saw an glorified vision of me, just like John? Not he too.

,,But you know me.”, I managed to utter.

,,Yes.”, he smiled shyly at me, ,,I am closer to nobody than to you, and I know that despite everything you accomplished you are just as much a person like all of us, and that you too can sometimes make decisions that are…”, he sounded friendly mocking, ,,…not so wise. But strangely it just reinforces that. I… I love you… because I know you.

I  couldn’t say when it began, then at the beginning it was just a holy, pure love, without me expecting anything. Most times I still believe this, or maybe I lie to myself, but…  Delenn, I am aware it is not my destiny and yours was not only to unite the humans and all the other peoples but also to find a human… mate, and who would I be to question destiny. And still…”, a even stronger shaking in his voice. I wanted to comfort him but I did not know how, ,,…it hurts so much. I knew, even if he would never be worthy of you, Sheridan was it so much more than I… and I told myself I only wanted the best for you… I never in my life felt in this way before. I couldn’t even serve you good enough. I am not allowed to feel this, but I am just too weak and pathetic to end it. I know I’m not worthy of you and still… I can’t stop to feel this way.”

Of course I was aware that these emotions also arose from my position in our society, yet I hardly thought at that.

He believed he wouldn’t be good enough for me? He, who embodied the best of the Minbari, while I… hardly still belonged to them, hardly ever had belonged to them. He, even now so innocent and pure, and I, the war criminal and mass murderer. I wanted to say all of this, but the words didn’t manage to leave my lips and I could only ask: ,,How can you believe you wouldn’t be good enough for _me_?”

He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, yet nothing seemed to  come to his mind and so he closed it again. Pain and the smallest bit of hope shimmered in his eyes.

Comfortingly I touched his lower arm. It seemed as if I would truly feel this for the first time, his shape, his wiry, firm muscles under the fabric.

He looked away again.

,,It is okay.”, I mumbled and laid, hesitantly as if I would scare him away like a timid bird, my arm around him. At first he still tensed up, but then he carefully touched my hand at his flank. We sat there like this for quite a while, and the light sooner faded from the inside of the station.

,,Did you ever were unrequited in love?”, he said at last and mumbled then: ,,If this isn’t a too personal question, I didn’t wanted to…”

,,Yes, I was. Several times.”

Lennier stared at me surprised.

I had spent the far greater amount of my life without a mate and love had always raised difficulties for me. That nevertheless so much came to my mind for his question suddenly let me realize how much older than Lennier I actually was.

,,At the beginning it was not unrequited with Cassuan – you know who he was – but after the war…”, Mayan was the only one who knew about this. But Mayan hated me now. And it seemed just right that Lennier should got to know this too: ,,He ended our relationship because he couldn’t bear how I lead the war against the humans anymore. I had hoped the whole time he would still forgive me. After a whole cycle, after the war was over I hoped he would react to my calls and come back, after all I had ended it now, and I did try to find forgiveness. I never saw him again.

Then there was this human diplomat, Ambassador Evren Aykay. We could talk for hours, and I never had have such deep, philosophical conversations with an human before. Sometimes I almost forgot that he was no Minbari. Perhaps in hindsight I am lucky to believe it would simply be not possible to harbor such feelings for a human, for it protected me from the pain. Despite I constantly thought at our time together, and would have met him every day preferably. Despite when we talked I could only think at what a wonderful person he was and how beautiful he looked and how his hair would feel like.”

I noticed how Lenniers gaze got something lost again.

,,And still I did not thought for a single time I would be in love with him.”, I hasted to say, ,,I already had suspected that I am able to feel love for people who are not Minbari, but I deemed it for so monstrous, pervert and an a contamination of our purity that I lied to myself I could not. Some when I actually believed it myself. Nevertheless I asked him one day, I didn’t knew why myself, if he could imagine to love a Minbari. As he negated I almost would have cried and I spent the next weeks under a curtain of sadness and could not bear to meet him and did not know why.”

What a big step it was back then to admit that to myself. How paradox, that now I had ended an relationship with an human, something I had longed for my whole life. I breathed in deeply.

,,Only as I became ambassador on Babylon 5 I started slowly to admit it and with time even see it as truly nothing bad, because we are all citizens of the universe after all. Even if I learned his name only afterwards I already asked myself who he was while I… interrogated Jeff. The human who carried Valens soul inside him. And in all those years after I thought about him.”, an memory crept up in me that I hadn’t had for years because I was so ashamed of it. I had asked myself who Jeffrey Sinclair was, gathered all information I could find about him with the justification that I would only do it out of political interest, to not have to remind how they had ripped him out of the fast mover, how he had laid tied up and disturbed in front of me, or stood halfly, halfly hung in his bounds, clothes shredded, blood on his pale beige skin, blood in the alien – beautiful – hair on his body and on his head. How he had been tortured. How much his sight had aroused me. As much as Jeff had been humiliated, as terrible was what I did, as pervert because he still was a human.

I tried to dispel the memory once more, yet the pictures had burned themselves in my mind. The more I tried to forget them the more clearly I saw them. I continued speaking to forgot.

,,Jeff and I became friends. Yet something hold me back from truly making a move towards him… had I still subconscious prejudices?  And after what I had done to him he could impossibly love me. Anyway, in Valens prophecy was written a human who would be my ally in the Shadow War would become my mate, so we would find together sooner or later in any case.”, I laughed joylessly, ,,In the prophecy Jeff himself wrote after his time travel to help me in the Shadow War and to legitimize my and Johns relationship for my people.

And then he came together with Sakai, and was commandeered to Minbar later. I could understand that he did not want me. Me, the woman who let his fast mover get captured and tortured him to test him and then erased his memory.”

And I thought at the night before he travelled in the past with Babylon 4. As I taught him how he would change, when he undergot the transformation… The memory was gorgeous and painful.

Lennier and I sat beside each other, my arm still around his back. Yet the quietness no longer suffocated us. It didn’t matter anymore to me at all. It was completely dark now and I only discerned the fields on Babylon 5s inside and the stone garden only shadowy, and with the night time somehow seemed to have changed, it was more flowing and harder to grasp. Some when Lennier overcame himself to lay his arm around me too. It cost him some trials because the rest of my body and my own arm were in the way, and he mumbled he hadn’t expected it would be so technically difficult to embrace somebody. His body was warm. I felt how his chest moved under my hand trough his breathing. His fingers softly stroke over my flank.

I was so tired that it became difficult to have complicated thoughts, and everything seemed strangely easy and clear. The political crisis, my unforgivable crime and how trilled my feelings for Lennier were hardly still reached me.

And then I felt, and it seemed strangely unreal to me, how he laid his head on my shoulder. His bone crest pricked in my neck slightly but it was okay. I caressed his underarm. And he grasped for my hair and raised his head from my shoulder and let an strand slide trough his fingers marveling.

It actually did not seem such a big step after what we had undergone together. How superficial starting a romantic relationship actually was in comparison to our deep friendship. How less it meant in face of that.

I laid my hand on his cheek and felt his cheekbone under my fingers. His eyes were completely blue, without any green or brown speckles. He had golden eyelashes.

Then I leaned forward, stopped to give him time to pull away, when he wasn’t ready yet. Instead he closed his eyes.

,,E’ suur Ar’, Lennier?”

,,Vi’is.”, he mumbled. I felt the breath of air of his words against my lips.

And it actually did not seem like a big step to kiss him.

Objectively, it really was not a good kiss. It showed that he did this for the first time. He was to surprised to do anything other than sitting there with tilted head, and as I drove my tongue against his lips and then his own tongue, he just made small, undirected movements with it, probably to conceal that he had absolutely not the slightest idea of what to do with it.

Yet nevertheless it was so familiar, so natural, and despite being quite dry his lips felt very good and he tasted like home.

For a moment he continued to sit there with his eyes closed and his mouth half open as I broke away from him. Then he looked at me dreamy-eyed and smiled, and I had never seen him smile like in this moment.

I was aware it would become difficult with him, him who knew who I was and in front of whom I couldn’t deny what I had done to myself. I knew the guilt and pain would come back, and likely they would destroy our relationship like they did it with all before that.

Yet in this moment it did not matter to me in any way. We just sat beside each other and I was happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Despite the rest of the fic being quite angsty and bleak, I love how happy the end makes me feel – even if it isn’t to hundred percent an happy end, but just ends on a happy note, but anything else would feel cheap for this truly painfully complicated and realistic ship. I generally like how their date turned out, the atmosphere shifting from tense and fearful to honest and then to comfort and safety with each other. 
> 
> I do not think that Delenn does love Lennier the way he loves her, it is clearly darker and more complicated than simply romantic love, but I think in some way she does love him, even if its mostly as her soulmate and the person who knows her best, which she also fears with all her being, it scares her how close they are and how much about her true self he knows, which makes her trying to throw him away. She doesn’t feels the easy, corny romantic love and simple physical attraction towards him she felt towards Sheridan, but after the way she touches Lennier all the time and sometimes looks at him, there might be some part of physical desire – or just enough secureness to make it possible – and I do believe that what she feels for Lennier could turn to romantic love over the course of time, which is what started at the end of this fic.

**Author's Note:**

> I upload this with the second chapter right behind because alone it would be a bit crass as a start. I’m not sure if it is to cruel to let Sheridan watch, but then, Lennier had to sit watch too and somehow it makes sense to me that he needed that for letting go and truly realizing that the two of them are to different to fit harmonically together. 
> 
> Uploads will take place every Wednsday, Friday and Sunnday at 9 pm middle european standard time.


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